WND EXCLUSIVE

Clintons fiercely suppressing movie putting them in bad light

28 million saw 'Path to 9/11' once on TV, but it's been buried since

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations may be threatened by a possible indictment over her email server, the loss of American lives in Benghazi and other scandals. But the Clintons still wield enough power to suppress a movie that reflects poorly on her husband’s administration 10 years after the only time it was allowed to be seen.

“The Path to 9/11” was written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, who confirmed to WND this week that the Clintons ordered the five-hour documdrama to be quashed after it drew a stunning 28 million viewers when it was aired by ABC amid controversy.

Nowrasteh’s newest film, “The Young Messiah,” earned $3.4 million and a CinemaScore grade of “A-” in its opening last weekend.

“The Path to 9/11” dramatizes the events leading to the 9/11 terror attacks, beginning with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It derived many of its scenes from the 9/11 Commission Report.

However, it was “never seen again,” Nowrasteh said.

“Never been released due directly to the efforts of some who didn’t like what it said. It was a political hot potato. Unfortunately, Disney and (CEO) Bob Iger caved to the pressure,” he told WND.

The pressure, Nowrasteh said, was “coming from Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, their supporters.”

The movie, however, showed the “failures of two administrations, the Clinton and Bush administrations.”

He described the censorship as exemplary of the Clintons’ “pattern” of suppressing “all opposition.”

WND reported exclusively in 2006 that retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson, a former military aide to President Clinton, revealed Nowrasteh came to him in frustration after network executives began pressing for changes to the script.

Patterson’s book about his years in the Clinton White House, “Dereliction of Duty,” was a source for the movie.

He told WND he recognized the television production conflates several events, but, in terms of conveying how the Clinton administration handled its opportunities to get bin Laden, it’s “100 percent factually correct,” he said.

“I was there with Clinton and (National Security Adviser Sandy) Berger and watched the missed opportunities occur,” Patterson declared.

Immediately after “The Path to 9/11” was broadcast in two parts, Nowrasteh told WND that with Bill Clinton’s lawyers pressing to cancel the docudrama, it wasn’t until the morning that part one was scheduled to run that its airing was certain.

Three scenes, totaling about 70 seconds, were altered, which Nowrasteh counted as a victory in light of the fierce opposition.

“Imagine for a moment a world in which any of the movies ‘Flight 93,’ ‘World Trade Center,’ ‘Zero Dark 30’ or ‘American Sniper’ had been produced but never screened in theaters, because some cabal of politicians had objected and seen to it that the film would be censored, censured, and suppressed,” he wrote.

“Stop imagining. That is exactly what happened to the prime-time ABC miniseries ‘The Path to 9/11.’ The film is arguably the most significant of the post-9/11 set, as it connects the dots between the first World Trade Center attack of 1993, the failure to neutralize Osama Bin Laden despite multiple opportunities, and the ultimate tragedy of September 11, 2001.”

The reason for the unprecedented censorship, Hyde said, “may be summarized in two words: The Clintons.”

He recalled that “at least three of Bill Clinton’s attorneys, as well as allies and advisers to Hillary’s 2008 president campaign in the Senate, the House, the media, and the blogosphere went into an overdrive campaign of public denunciations, back-channel maneuvers and direct threats to Disney and ABC’s broadcast license.”

“Even Sandy Berger, national security adviser to Bill Clinton who had been convicted in 2005 of stealing classified documents from the national archives, was considered a credible public witness against the film.”

Hyde noted that no “free-speech, civil libertarian or professional guild organization came to the producers’ defense; not PEN America (even though Nowrasteh was a two-time award winner), not the Director’s Guild of America, nor the Writer’s Guild of America, nor the Screen Actor’s Guild, nor the ACLU.”

“Participant Productions, maker of the anti-McCarthyism movie Good Night and Good Luck among others, posted a letter in support of the miniseries on its website, but quickly took it down under pressure from ex-Vice President Al Gore.”

The Clintons got what they wanted, he said.

“Iger forbade his employees from talking to anyone and pulled the plug, putting political considerations above his fiduciary duties to the Disney shareholds, going so far as to refuse to sell the film to prospective buyers.”

“We now know (thanks to the book, ‘Clinton in Exile’) that it was Bill Clinton himself, among others, who called Iger and demanded that movie be edited or pulled. With the specter of a then nearly certain Hillary Clinton presidency staring them in the face (and with Iger and many others in the film’s management hierarchy already financial contributors to the Clintons), Disney caved and committed perhaps the most blatant, under-reported, and significant act of censorship in modern American history.”